GHRA welcomes former Top Cop’s letter on West Berbice disturbances

The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) has welcomed a letter in yesterday’s Stabroek News by former Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud on the West Coast Berbice disturbances last year including the murders of cousins Joel and Isaiah Henry.

In a statement yesterday, the GHRA noted that the letter made the case that “political rather than other factors were responsible for the electoral disturbances on West Coast Berbice in 2020. His carefully documented commentary on the political dimensions of the …disturbances and murders constitutes a valuable public service.

“The retired Commissioner prioritizes political incitement rather than ethnic animosities as the root cause of the disturbances; ….; raises the possible influence of organized crime if the Henry murders were in fact linked to their destroying a ganja field and notes the destruction of forensic evidence at the crime scenes. The Guyana Human Rights Association endorses all these points”.

However, for completeness sake, the GHRA said that the spectre of political interference hanging over the case must be extended to include the refusal of the Ministry of Home Affairs to permit the Guyana Police Force to benefit from the services it had initially sought from the internationally-distinguished Argentine Team of Forensic Anthropology (EAAF).

The GHRA said that the cost of depriving the GPF of the international forensic support they sought must include the collapse of the case in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday against two men charged with the murder of Isaiah Henry.

“Apart from its impact on public confidence, this set-back for the prosecution must take its toll on the morale of the CID, further adding to the generalized turmoil currently seizing the Guyana Police Force.

“Without political acceptance of the need for impartial external expertise, the important and wide-ranging issues raised by Commissioner Persaud’s letter are unlikely to see the light of day in this ill-fated investigation”, the GHRA said.

After the police force had agreed to help from EAAF, it changed its stance apparently at the behest of the government. Though an official of EAAF visited Guyana in connection with the murder of the Henry cousins, he was not provided with the documentation he had requested from the police to provide a comprehensive assessment of what had occurred.

In his letter in yesterday’s Stabroek News, Persaud had said that West Coast Berbice communities had traditionally been areas of calm and that the eruption of unrest last year was seen as linked to the elections unrest and stirring up by political leaders.

Persaud said: “The Mahaica-West Berbice, Region No. 5, of Guyana is a geographical area that has enjoyed relative peace historically. Residents of the rural farming communities that comprise the Region tolerated each other despite their different ethnic and religious identities and other differences. There is far more cooperation than conflicts within the communities and among them. Political leadership was the major contributing factor to the isolated incidents of public disorder experienced by some communities of the region over time”.

The full letter can be found at: https://www.stabroeknews.com/2021/07/06/opinion/letters/h ad-residents-in-region-five-been-advised-differently-by-theirleaders-much-of-the-upheaval-could-have-been-avoided/